Chapter 831: Final Battle - College Entrance Examination
Captain Rudolf von Ribbentrop walked towards a Russian girl with short hair, thin clothes, a somewhat sturdy look and a decent face on the side of the road. He found that the girl was shivering slightly. He didn't know if it was because she was cold because she wore too few clothes, or because she was hungry because she hadn't eaten for many days. In short, Captain Ribbentrop felt sympathy.
"Girl," Ribbentrop said to the girl with a smile in stiff Russian, "This is for you."
Then he handed over a box of 100 grams of Scarlett Energy Chocolate.
Zoya found that there was a box of something that looked like candy in her outstretched right hand, and she was stunned immediately-what was going on? Why did the enemy give her food? Did he want to bribe her? Or did he want to have fun with her? Although this guy is reactionary, he still looks...
"Girl, don't be afraid," Ribbentrop had already noticed that the girl in front of him seemed a little scared, and he said with a smile, "It will be fine. When the Bolshevik Party is overthrown, life will be better."
"Thank...thank you..." Zoya had already reacted at this time. The box of candy was the result of her begging. Although she didn't understand what Ribbentrop meant by a lot of "German-accented Russian", she still said "thank you" in German.
"Do you know German?" Ribbentrop also changed to German, "That's great."
"I know a little, I taught it in school." Zoya said.
"You speak very well, and your pronunciation is very accurate." Ribbentrop said in slow German, "You must have done very well in school? Judging from your age, you must be a college student, right?"
"I...I'm not," Zoya shook her head. "I didn't pass the exam."
It should be that he was not allowed to pass the exam!
"Then you can try again." Ribbentrop said, "Both Pskov State Pedagogical University and Petrograd Imperial State University are recruiting students now. As long as you can pass the exam, food and accommodation will be guaranteed, and you don't have to pay tuition. You might as well give it a try."
Pskov State Pedagogical University is a local university in Pskov Oblast, founded in 1874. Petrograd Imperial State University is the oldest university in Russian history and one of the best universities in the world. The university was founded in 1724 and was ordered by Peter the Great. However, the current name of this university should be National Leningrad University - this is the higher education institution that Zoya has always dreamed of!
But Ribbentrop's words sounded like a bolt from the blue to Zoya.
"Petrograd Imperial State University? Could it be that Leningrad has become Petrograd?" Zoya looked at the handsome German man in front of her nervously.
Petrograd Imperial State University or National Leningrad University is in the center of Petrograd, separated from the Winter Palace by the Neva River.
If this school has now become the Petrograd Royal State University, doesn't it mean... doesn't it mean that the glorious Leningrad has become the loyal Petrograd of Her Majesty the Empress?
Zoya was immediately confused. Leningrad has become Petrograd, and the Romanov dynasty is really going to be restored!
"Not yet," Ribbentrop shrugged, "but it will be soon. Leningrad has been besieged for nearly a year, and food reserves are almost exhausted. Recently, a large number of peaceful residents have been expelled. Many teachers and family members of the Petrograd Royal State University have also been driven out. Her Majesty has taken them in the Imperial Village and used the Catherine Palace as the temporary campus of the Petrograd Royal State University."
Zoya didn't fully understand what he said, but she got the general idea - Leningrad seemed to be about to fall, and the reactionary empress had even begun to prepare to educate the successor of the anti-G revolution!
What can I do!
Just when Captain Rudolf von Ribbentrop was talking about "traffic jam" and chatting with the Russian girl Zoya. On another road from Velikiye Luki to Smolensk, Brandt, a sniper of the 3rd Armored Division of the German Wehrmacht, was riding a half-track armored vehicle. Yes, that was Brandt, the anti-war socialist who lurked in the Nazi camp. He won the Iron Cross for his outstanding performance in the Battle of Warsaw and entered the Wehrmacht Sniper School in Zossen, where he received sniper training.
After graduating from the Wehrmacht Sniper School in Zossen, he did not return to his original unit, but was assigned to the 3rd Armored Division, a well-known elite unit in the Wehrmacht, and was assigned to the sniper squad of the fire support platoon of the 9th Armored Grenadier Company of the 3rd Armored Grenadier Regiment.
There were a total of 4 snipers (and 4 assistants) in his sniper squad, including him, the squad leader Sergeant Schmidt, and a corporal named Hans Told, and the last one was a private first class soldier Joseph Meyer of Jewish descent from the Baltic States.
Four people are now sitting in a half-track vehicle, swaying along the road towards the place where the dense artillery fire came from.
There are also many Russian beggars on both sides of this road, most of them are women, and there are also some elderly people, all in ragged clothes, standing numbly on the roadside, staring at the endless convoy of the 3rd Armored Division.
"How can this be? Isn't the "Land Reform Decree" issued? Why are there still beggars everywhere?" Brandt looked at the Russians on the roadside with sympathy and said with some emotion.
"Normal." Joseph Meyer said.
He was holding a FG42 paratrooper rifle wrapped in a sheath (snipers can choose between FG42 and Mauser 98K as their weapon), and his eyes were just staring at the girl on the roadside.
The other two snipers and four sniper assistants on the half-track vehicle were all dozing off, and no one paid attention to the conversation between Brandt and Meyer.
"How can it be normal?" Brandt frowned and said, "Land has been distributed, and agricultural taxes have been exempted for three years. How can there be no bread to eat?"
"How can farming be so easy?" Meyer's family is a rich farmer in the Baltic State. He is an expert in running a farm. "Farming requires not only land, but also labor, farm tools, livestock, seeds, irrigation facilities, good weather, and a good mind for business, and of course a stable environment.
What do the Russians have now? Except for land, they have nothing else. Herbert (Brandt), have you seen a few strong laborers along the way? It seems that there is none. And horses, have you seen Russian people leading horses? There are none, right?"
When the empress issued the "Land Reform Decree", she was also desperately expanding her White Army! And Pskov Oblast is the only relatively solid base of the White Russian government, so almost all the strong male laborers here have been conscripted (not all of them were conscripted by the White Army, the Red Army also conscripted a lot before).
As for horses…the collective farms didn’t have many horses to begin with, and they were all taken away when the Red Army retreated. Some tractors were left behind, but now they have become scrap metal. On the one hand, there is no way to distribute tractors to farmers (individual farmers can’t afford them), and on the other hand, there is no oil for tractors.
And last year, when the autumn harvest came, the southern part of Pskov Oblast was not completely occupied by the German and White Russian troops, and many collective farms did not organize the autumn harvest, allowing a large number of crops to rot in the fields, which caused this year’s spring famine.
The same situation also exists in Western Belarus and Right Bank Ukraine! Agricultural production destroyed by cruel wars and social changes (from public ownership to private ownership) is impossible to recover in the short term. Most of the land allocated to private individuals has been abandoned, and the people who remain in the area basically rely on wheat imported from South America and Egypt by the European Community to make a living. Because the Russian Empire is not a member of the European Community, it cannot get relief for the time being, so there are so many beggars.
However, Russian Empress Olga herself doesn’t care how many subjects are begging, anyway, she has exempted all the taxes that can be exempted. The people below had to find ways to survive themselves - it was said that no one had ever starved to death in Russia!
On April 30, the German army began shelling and air raids. The empress, who was desperate to return to Petrograd, wrote letters in the Alexander Palace in the suburbs of Petrograd (Leningrad) - a lot of letters, some to several Red Army generals in Petrograd, promising them official titles; some to the generals of the German Northern Army Group, praising their bravery and contributions to the revival of the Russian Empire, and promising to grant them Russian noble titles after the capture of Petrograd; some to the most influential German entrepreneurs, inviting them to participate in the development of Russian oil resources; and two letters to Hessmann and Chloe. The letter to Hessmann was very humble and ambiguous, while the letter to Chloe proposed marrying Elizabeth, the only daughter of Prince Yusupov and Princess Irina, to Hessmann's son Rudolf...
By 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the empress had almost finished writing her letters. At this time, her Guards Commander Prince Yusupov walked into her office quickly, holding a telegram he had just received in his hand - a war report from the German Wehrmacht General Staff.
"Your Majesty, good news! The German Wehrmacht's 3rd Panzer Grenadier Division and the 5th SS Panzer Grenadier Division have just broken through the Velikaya River and the Pripyat River (a tributary of the Dnieper River, the famous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is located on this river)."
"Break through the Pripyat River?" Olga knew that the German army would attack the Velikaya River from Velikiy to the south, but she didn't know that they would break through the Pripyat River. "Where? Belarus or Ukraine?"
"Near Kiev, Ukraine." Prince Yusupov said, "Then the German army will break through to the east bank of the Dnieper River, and then go north to Smolensk, so that the Red Army in the Belarusian salient will be surrounded."